Lei

"There are probably 8,000 Chinese people in the Memphis area. Not as many as in New York, of course, but still a lot. I work in IT and enjoy technology, so one thing I’ve done to help the Chinese community here is to create a number of groups inside WeChat. It’s a social media app like Facebook, but very popular in China, so people moving here are already familiar with it. I’ve created groups for many different topics: St. Jude Chinese, UTHSC Chinese, UM Chinese, food, shopping, politics, movies & music, IT of course, and others. It's an easy way for newcomers to Memphis to find out about things like the Chinese School, Chinese restaurants, and local supermarkets where they can buy Chinese products. Social media gives us a way to help each other, so new people become comfortable here more quickly. We also use the groups to communicate information about parties, meetings, and activities of interest to the Chinese community. Since I work with technology so much, I get WeChat messages in Mandarin all the time asking for IT help, and I’m able to get answers to people quickly. It’s funny; a lot of people know my name because of the app, but they don’t know my face, so when I go to parties and introduce myself, people often say, ‘Oh! So you’re Lei Yan!’ In addition to the WeChat groups, I've just recently launched a new Chinese community website [http://memyq.org] that includes portals, yellow pages, classified advertising, and more."

Lei Yan, IT Administrator IV, Center for Integrative and Translational Genomics
University of Tennessee Health Science Center

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